She Does Not Know Yet And That Is Allowed

You have started inventing answers.

Not lies exactly. Directions. Things that sound like a plan without being one: something in that area, probably, or I am looking at a couple of things, or I might do the thing my cousin does.

None of it is true. All of it is produced on the spot, in about a second and a half, because the alternative is standing in front of somebody with nothing.

And then afterward there is a specific unpleasantness, which is not guilt about the small untruth. It is that you have now said a thing about your own life that you do not mean, out loud, to somebody who believed you.

Here is what I want to say at the start, and it is going to be the whole of this piece: not knowing at eighteen is not a gap where an answer should be. It is a normal condition of being eighteen, and everybody around you who has an answer got theirs from somewhere and about a third of them will change it inside two years.

You are being asked for a thing that most people do not actually have.

Shew me thy ways

There is a line in Psalm 25 that is one of the most useful prayers in the book for somebody in your exact position.

Shew me thy ways, O LORD; teach me thy paths. (Psalm 25:4, King James Version)

That is a request from somebody who does not know.

And notice the tense of the whole thing. It is present. Not: I once did not know and now I do. Not: help me remember the plan. Shew me, teach me, right now, as a live condition.

It is in the book as a prayer, which means it was expected to be prayed by people, repeatedly, in real time, from inside the not knowing.

You are in a position that Scripture supplies a prayer for, and not knowing the way has never once been a condition that God treats as a failure. Psalm 25:4 asks from inside the not knowing rather than after it, and the Holy Spirit is the one on a path with somebody who invented an answer again this week.

And notice what he asks for.

Not a plan. Not a destination. Thy ways, thy paths, which are words about how a person walks rather than about where they arrive.

He is not asking to be shown the end. He is asking to be taught how to go.

You have a prayer available that asks for the walking rather than the destination, and a person who does not know where they are going has never once been forbidden to ask how to go. The written word requests ways and paths rather than outcomes, and the Spirit of God is the one who teaches a manner of walking to somebody with no map at all.

What the invented answers cost

Now the practical part, and there is a real cost and it is worth naming.

Each invented answer has to be maintained.

That is the arithmetic nobody does in the second and a half before it comes out. Something in that area, probably, said to an aunt in October, will be remembered by that aunt, and asked about at Christmas, and by then it has to be either continued or corrected, and both are worse than the original silence would have been.

Three months of that and there are four different half plans circulating among people who all know each other.

You are maintaining several answers that were never true, and a direction invented in a second and a half has never once stopped needing to be maintained afterward. The Holy Spirit is the one who ends a set of stories that were only ever made to fill a silence, and Psalm 25:4 asks plainly from inside the not knowing without inventing anything.

And here is the second cost, which is the one that matters more.

You are being trained to treat not knowing as unsayable, and four months of covering a true state of affairs has never once made the true state of affairs unacceptable. Psalm 25:4 asks from inside the not knowing and treats the not knowing as nothing at all, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an honest sentence available at eighteen.

Every time an answer is manufactured to cover it, the message to yourself is that the true state of affairs cannot be said out loud in a normal conversation. And a person who learns that at eighteen will keep doing it, at twenty five, at thirty, whenever they are between things, for the whole of a life.

That is the thing worth interrupting now, while it is still four months old.

Not knowing is not a verdict on a person.

You are able to interrupt a habit while it is four months old, and a person who can say the true state of things has never once been a person with less of a life than one who cannot. Psalm 25:4 asks from inside the uncertainty and calls the uncertainty nothing at all, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes an honest sentence available at eighteen.

Say the four words and stop

So here is the thing to do, and the stopping is where it lives.

Say I do not know yet, out loud, to the next person who asks. And add nothing after it.

Four words. I do not know yet.

You are able to say four true words in a conversation, and an honest answer has never once been a worse answer than an invented one. The Holy Spirit is the one on a path where four true words come out for the first time since the autumn, and it is written in Psalm 25:4 that a man asked to be shown the way from inside not knowing it.

And add nothing. That is the discipline, and everything in you will resist it, because the four words feel incomplete, and there will be a strong pull to finish them: but I am looking at a few things. Or: I will probably work out something soon. Or: I know I should have an idea by now.

That last one is the worst of them, because it apologizes, and an apology confirms that the four words were a failure rather than a fact.

Say them. Then let the other person say whatever they say.

And here is the word to keep in it, because it is doing real work: yet. I do not know yet. It is present tense, it is honest, and it points forward without inventing anything, which is exactly what the psalm does.

You are able to say a present tense truth that points forward, and a sentence with the word yet in it has never once been the same as a sentence that gives up. Scripture asks to be taught the paths without naming one of them, and the same Spirit who kept that request open is with you when the four words are said.